As a greater emphasis is placed upon international manufacturing operations, the transportation and shipping of goods and their components becomes a valuable aspect of a company's business and often a critical aspect of a company's business plan. The logistics in coordinating the shipment and receipt of goods has become increasingly complex. The locations of a company's suppliers have expanded not only to neighboring states or countries but also to locations around the world.
In the present day economy, a company often has numerous manufacturing and/or supplying facilities located around the world. The company can engage a number of carriers to transport goods or products. Conventionally, the carrier issues an invoice to the company to request payment for the transporting of goods and/or products. In some situations where the invoice is an individual invoice, the checking and validating of the invoice may be performed manually. However, even for a relatively small company, a large number of invoices may be received daily. For large companies, 100,000 invoices may be received annually. To audit each invoice manually can require a large amount of resources, both in time and capital, to perform each audit.
The conventional method additionally may also include an invoice being directed to a finance department or other responsible department that may not have direct knowledge of the contents of a shipment or details of a shipment. As a business reality, an individual within the finance department often approves payment of the invoice either without reviewing the invoice or by only performing a quick scan of the invoice. Before the payment of an invoice, there is often little or no review of the terms of an invoice or an underlying manifest that provides details of the shipment. Often discrepancies within the invoice and manifest are not discovered until payment has been submitted. The invoice often may not revisited until 3 or 4 months later.
When a invoice has been authorized to be paid for a wrong amount, wrong goods, or already-paid-for goods, and the payment actually occurs, the process to correct such situation is often time and resource consuming. In some instances, once a bill is paid and paid wrong, 12 to 18 months of back and forth between the carrier and customer involving looking for a document, a backup document, and any other documentation could ensue. No matter the amount of the dispute, from $5.00 to $1,000.00 or more, the same amount of resources must be exerted by both companies with multitudes of paperwork characteristic of the resolution process. Some companies have multiple full-time personnel within their finance department or audit department to deal with short payment claims by carriers, months and years after a bill was paid incorrectly.
Most conventional invoice processes within the shipping freight industry are still largely a manual proposition. Manual process are error prone, and often result in incorrect invoices. Most shippers and/or companies perform their audits post payment, which while better than no audit at all, is expensive, and provides limited feedback to the provider to fix the problem and minimize future mistakes. Also, the capital spent, i.e. the incorrect amounts paid, is tied up for months while the dispute of the money takes place.
Thus what is needed is a more efficient and accurate way to approve accurate payment for an invoice and/or to settle any discrepancies in an invoice associated with freight shipping.